Judge Robert “Mack” Crawford, Pike County Superior Court, during his JQC hearing on Feb. 25. (Photo: John Disney/ALM)

Superior Court Judge Robert “Mack” Crawford's personal bank account was overdrawn by more than $2,000 when he told a court clerk to write him a check for more than $15,000 that had sat unclaimed in the court registry for more than 15 years.

But Crawford contended during testimony at his ethics hearing Monday that he had sufficient funds in other accounts that could have been transferred to cover any shortfall.

Crawford was the first witness to take the stand at a hearing by the state Judicial Qualifications Commission over whether Crawford violated the state Code of Judicial Conduct when he laid claim to the funds, which he deposited in 2002 on behalf of two former clients.

Ben Easterlin, JQC executive director (Photo: John Disney/ALM)

Crawford acknowledged that he paid the money back after Ben Easterlin, the commission's executive director, called him. Under questioning by Easterlin, who is prosecuting the ethics case, Crawford said, “You scared the hell out of me and asked me to give it [the money] back, and I tried to comply. And I thought we had an agreement that, if I paid it back, you told me this wouldn't go anywhere.”

Crawford said he did pay back $15,676. But the JQC filed ethics charges against Crawford last year and then suspended him from his post as a Pike County Superior Court judge after a county grand jury charged him with two felonies: theft and violating his oath of office.

If the JQC's three-person judicial panel, headed by Fulton County Superior Court Chief Judge Robert McBurney, finds Crawford violated the judicial ethics code, it could recommend his removal from the bench. Crawford was appointed to the bench in 2010.

Crawford, who is represented by former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes and Zebulon lawyer Virgil Brown, contends that the money was owed to him by the client who hired him. That man, Dan Mike Clark, died in 2004. Crawford testified that he took the case without any fee agreement or retainer, which Barnes pointed out was not unusual for Crawford and “common outside the rarified air of King & Spalding and Alston & Bird.”

Easterlin is a former partner at King & Spalding.

Under questioning by Easterlin, Crawford claimed the Pike County Superior Court clerk had discussed the unclaimed funds with him several times and that he had given her possible contact information for relatives of his former clients. He said that, when the clerk informed him that she intended to forward the unclaimed funds to the state, Crawford said he had a claim on the money.

The underlying case challenged the tax sale of the property where Crawford's clients, Clark and Bobbie Whalen, lived. Crawford said Clark told him he could keep the money in the registry as a fee if he could keep Clark living on the property until he died.

Crawford said he fulfilled that promise.

Clark, he added, “could not pay me. … He was trying to come up with the money to put into the court.”

But Easterlin pointed out during questioning that the deposited funds would have been used to reimburse the buyer who purchased the property at a tax sale, if Crawford were successful. At the time, the property listed someone else as the owner. Crawford claimed that Clark told him he held power of attorney for property owner Ann Rita Thomas and that she had deeded the property to him, although the new deed wasn't filed until after the tax sale.

Crawford said that, when clerk Carolyn Williams notified him in 2017 that she intended to forward the unclaimed funds to the state, “She asked me if I wanted to take the money at one point. … She just wanted it gone. All she told me was she wanted it out [of the registry.] It had sat there for 15 years and still was in there.”

Clark said he never sought a court order from another judge to formalize the payment and advised Williams to not file his handwritten note in the old case file. Crawford said he wrote the note, “so if somebody came behind us, there would be a record of it.”

“It was never filed under the case number, because it was closed,” Crawford said. The judge also acknowledged that he didn't sign or date his note.

“I made a mistake,” Crawford said. “I am humbly sorry that I took it.”

Crawford said he learned after the GBI began investigating that agents located Whalen and that she claimed the funds after he returned the money to the court.